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The Fifth Risk - Michael Lewis
By deleted member · 4 posts · 15 views
By deleted member · 4 posts · 15 views
last updated May 16, 2020 11:16AM
What Members Thought

Lewis does a great job explaining different federal agency's missions and purpose; I learned a lot. I love Lewis's writing.
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This one was short, well-written, and generally compelling. It made for a quick, easy read, although it detours from its main point often. The book's theme is supposed to highlight the risks of an understaffed and uninformed Trump administration, and it does a decent job of it: describing how little interest Trump staffers put into learning about their organizations, etc. Lewis highlights the seriousness of this by exploring what certain agencies, such as DoE and NOAA, do and why their missions
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To know what effect a throughly underprepared and uninterested administration might have on the complexity that is the US government, one has to take a closer look at it. This book, while short, takes a passionate look inside three government agencies, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and Department of Commerce, as well as several of its leading employees. Between various expeditions into weather prediction, nuclear waste management and rural development funding, a red line is
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This book leaves little doubt that our country is being run by a bunch of dunces who care only about lining their own pockets. People appointed to lead departments have zero qualifications to do so and have no interest in learning. The complete and total war on science and data is a danger to us all. What is being done in the Department of Energy (nuclear waste), the Department of Agriculture (food safety), and NOAA (wanting to SELL weather forecasts) is nothing less than despicable. God help us
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Reading this I felt a mixture of sorrow, anger, and resignation. As someone who wrote transition memos, we had so much hope. As a nation we do not understand or appreciate everything the government does so we do not celebrate or leverage it as well as we should. Getting good people into government is critical.

Oct 13, 2018
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